Daddy Training
by Crystallized Honey
Summary: Alfred and Ivan are going to have a baby finally! Through adoption, of course. There's just one teensy little problem: Ivan has absolutely no clue how to care for a child. Obviously, it's time for Alfred to put his Ph.D in Daddy Training to use. The term of "Daddy" might be a bit different in this case, but he can make it work.
1. DT1: Introduction to Having a Child

It is in the middle of dessert that Alfred receives a mysterious phone call. Little jitters race through the tiny device and send a hum through the dining table. The sound reverberates in the room, hollow and noisy.

Ivan's eyes are drawn across the tabletop, past the empty wine glasses and the vase of yellow-headed sunflowers he'd purchased and given to Alfred two days ago, to the screen of the cellular device as it brightens with numbers. But he is unable to make out any specific details before Alfred is up and out of his seat, practically flying out of his chair in his rush to get to the other room. His husband gives an excited squeal through a mouth full of freshly baked apple pie and melted vanilla ice cream, a thoroughly muffled _hello_ after that.

Ivan has half a mind to scold Alfred for hastily answering his phone whilst in the middle of chewing. Then decides against it. Been there, done that.

Alfred's voice filters through the closed door, words mumbled and indecipherable, though his excitement is easy to read. _Matthew, maybe,_ Ivan thinks, scrounging up possible callers capable of invoking that fast-paced, whistling tone in the man's voice. _Feliciano?_

He gathers the dishes from their forgotten meal as Alfred's phone call draws on, obviously not just an open-and-shut deal. Lost in his thoughts, he absentmindedly scrapes the remnants off the plates and into the trash can, fills the sink with soap and water, and rolls up his sleeves.

He's squeezing the sponge around a dirtied spoon when Alfred returns to the kitchen, flouncing through the swinging door with a grin wide enough to show teeth.

"Guess what!" he yells excitedly, practically trembling in anticipation. If not for the lack of cellphone in the other's hand, Ivan would wonder if the damn thing were pulsing with another phone call.

Ivan, without good reason to be, is not nearly as enthusiastic and merely raises an eyebrow in inquiry to Alfred's sudden burst of happiness before turning back to the task at hand.

"Ivan!" Alfred whines, poking his head under Ivan's arm and into view. That one unruly tuft of hair tickles the underside of Ivan's jaw, then his nose. "You have to guess!"

Good-natured but somewhat exasperated by his inability to continue washing the dishes with his husband in the way, Ivan pulls away from the sink, suds and water dripping to the floor in a mess that'll need to be mopped up later. "And why can you not just tell me as you always do?"

"Because this time it's a surprise!"

Perhaps by chance, every other time had been a "surprise" as well, but Ivan fails to mention that. He doesn't say anything. He folds his still wet hands onto his hips and ignores the damp spots soaking through the fabric of his shirt. Silence falls between them, something Alfred can never truly stand. It's almost pitiful how easily he cracks.

"We're going to have a baby!"

"Very funny, Alfred," Ivan comments humorlessly, urging the man to the side now that the cat is out of the bag. "We're not going to have a baby. You cannot get pregnant."

In his peripheral vision, Ivan catches a glimpse of blue eyes dramatically rolling behind smudged lenses, like crashing waves. A response all on its own. Something along the lines of: _doesn't stop you from trying, though, does it?_ He ignores this, too.

"The adoption agency called!" Alfred announces, miraculously having lost none of the elation from before, despite Ivan's gloomy nature.

 _Oh._ The plate he has pulled from the sink slips through his wet fingers and tumbles to the tiled floor in a heap of jagged pieces. Yet another mess to clean up.

A gasp sounds and Alfred is horrified. "Oh, fuck, babe! Not the good china! We just got that."

Ivan barely registers this. "I am not ready," he states, calmly.

"'Not ready.' What do you mean you're not ready?" questions Alfred, retrieving the broom and dustpan from the corner and sweeping away the broken disaster that surrounds their feet.

"I am not ready to have a child, so call them back and tell them we do not want it."

Ivan dried his hands on a dishtowel and returns it back to its place draped around the handle of the oven. He leaves the kitchen in attempt to end the conversation, but he knows Alfred will be quick to follow once cleanup is complete.

Thankfully, he is given a minute to himself in the living room, to pace with worry and wear a trench into the carpet in front of the television. He takes a seat on the couch, his foot taps restlessly. He takes up the remote but quickly puts it back down. He stands, and the pacing starts again. This time, around the perimeter of the room. There is more space this way, more area to traverse.

Is he shaking? No, _no._ There is no need for melodrama here.

When Alfred enters the room, he stumbles directly into Ivan's back.

"Iv—"

Before he can finish the word, Ivan is whirling around, a heavy-handed grip settling atop his shoulders. He is guided to the couch and urged to sit amongst the cushions. Ivan settles bodily beside him with an uncharacteristic flop that sends the furniture skittering back a few inches across the floor.

"You do not understand, Alfred. I am not ready for a child," whispers Ivan, more so to the ceiling than his husband. "I thought I was ready but I am not ready. This is all happening so soon."

Alfred, sweeter than the dessert and wine they'd indulged in earlier, reaches out to clutch Ivan's hand warmly within his own. He strokes soothingly over the knuckles, gives a firm reassuring pat right above the wrist.

"I understand perfectly fine, Ivan," he says, closing the gap between them to capture Ivan's eyes. "I get it. You're nervous. Unsure. All of those things that come with thrusting yourself into an entirely new situation. But, Ivan, we've been waiting years for this. Years of hoping and wishing and—yeah, even praying. And we all know how you feel about that one, but you did it anyway because we wanted this. _I've_ been waiting years before even _that_ for this. I've always wanted this and I'm not sure I'm willing to give that up. So, _please,_ don't ask me to."

Of course, everything Alfred says is correct. Without any embellishment. _Years_ they had waited. Together. Constantly checking emails, never without a phone nearby. Chances came and went; a dangling carrot on a stick. Somewhere along the way, Ivan susposes he lost the hope Alfred still clearly holds. Filing the papers, answering the calls, waiting and waiting, actions that all blurred together. A sign of mindlessly going through the motions.

A dream of having a child. And a dream it became until, to Ivan, it fizzled away into something unrealistic, something that would never be gifted to them. He never truly prepared for the possibility.

Now it is here. No longer something that _could_ happen but something that _will._

"I am lost, Alfred. I do not know what I am doing," Ivan admits in a small voice, throwing his arms about Alfred's shoulders and pulling him into a bruising embrace. "I am scared."

Always one for physical displays of affection, Alfred snuggles in closer, hooking his hands under Ivan's arms. He rubs slowly up and down Ivan's back, switching back and forth between circles and nondescript polygons. When he speaks again, it is in a low mumble that Ivan feels against his chest more so than he hears in his ears.

"I'm scared, too. That's perfectly natural. Parenting is a big responsibility. Still, this is us, we're talking about. Ivan and Alfred. We can do it. Together, when have we ever not been able to accomplish anything?"

Ivan scoffs at Alfred's sentimentality and jokingly replies, "The Ikea furniture."

That earns him a half-hearted elbow to the gut.

" _So_ … Are we doing this or what?"

Ivan considers it. Runs down a mental list of pros and cons. Then he thinks of Alfred mere minutes ago, animated and overjoyed at the prospect of having a child with him. Alfred's happiness, Ivan is sure that will always trump his own fear.

"Yes."

He wishes to hold Alfred a little more but the second he gives his answer the man is scrambling away, jumping to his feet with a puffed out chest.

"I, Alfred F. Jones, promise to help mold you into the best father figure there ever was," he declares at the top of his lungs. "I made you into an awesome Daddy once before and I can do it again."

Like that, the moment is ruined.

Ivan can only give a heaving sigh at the exclamation, pinching fingers at the bridge of his nose. He can already feeling the beginnings of the inevitable headache Alfred's antics are bound to bring.

"That, Alfred, is inappropriate."


	2. DT2: Genetics and Phenotypes

_Ugly._

That is the first adjective to pop into Ivan's befuddled mind when he sees the thing Alfred's stupidly purchased and brought home. _Hideous_ and _grotesque_ follow minutely. An understatement, if anything, those words.

"Okay, so, like, our _actual_ baby won't be this…" Alfred stops, pressing a finger to his pouting lips in thought, struggling to find the appropriate word to describe such a repulsively sculpted figure. An impossible feat.

"Unsightly?" Ivan suggests.

But Alfred shakes his head, little cowlick bobbing along to the rhythm. Together, they turn back to the— _thing._ The little thing resting inside the plastic cradle of clashing pinks and purples on their kitchen table.

The eyelashes are sparse, the eyes wide and unseeing as they jiggle and roll at the slightest movement. The head is bald. No wispy strands or painted blob to resemble a badly worn toupee. The lips are nonexistent, simply a gaping hole with a red circle for a tongue. A sharply pointed protrusion is meant to resemble a nose.

"Revolting?" continues Ivan, like he's sifting through the thick pages of a thesaurus. "Monstrous? _Deformed?_ "

"No! Unattractive, I'd say. You can't talk about a child like that," he answers, appalled.

Ivan is equally scandalized because what he's looking at is definitely _not_ a child. A gremlin, more like. Some misshapen, accidental reanimation experiment formed from plastic. On any account, he's certain he's never beared witness to anything human that is this… repugnant.

"It's a d—"

Alfred interrupts immediately, wagging a disapproving finger, a swaying pendulum between Ivan's eyes. "Uh-unh. Our child."

"N—" protests Ivan, barely a syllable before he's chastised again. A slap that grazes the nape of his neck.

"Say it with me," prompts Alfred, grabbing Ivan's face in his hands, pulling his cheeks away from his teeth to stretch his lips. "Our… child."

"Our… ghastly mistake, you mean."

His ears are ringing now, Alfred having cuffed him harshly at the side of the head for backtalk. He glares down at the misfortune that is to become the physical manifestation of their pretend child. _Better than a sack of flour or an egg,_ Alfred had claimed minutes ago, slicing through the tape sealed along the edges of the box it came in with a knife.

Bernadette is the official name of the doll. Fitting; a not-so-pretty name for a not-so-appealing toy. She comes with an arsenal of items: a change of clothes, two diapers, a bottle, a blankie, a pacifier and a rattle. Obvious compensation for the face that not even a mother could love.

"Did you keep the receipt?" Ivan questions, giving the cradle a rock. It teeters, those beady eyes circle round and round, jumping like black beans.

Over the doll, Alfred shoots him a murderous glare, which, quite frankly, can mean a lot of things. However, the hand pressed protectively against the back pocket of his jeans says it all. Now that he knows there is a chance to return the wretched thing, Ivan is not going to be swayed on the matter.

"It is ugly," Ivan says, reaching for the blanket and tossing it over the cradle to hide the creature inside. "We are taking it back."

"No!"

Ignoring Alfred's objections, Ivan begins to gather up the box, shoving everything into the packaging carelessly. He tosses the plastic baby in head-first. The cradle goes in next, sliding in roughly enough to practically fold the doll in half.

"Okay, okay," Alfred concedes. "It _is_ ugly. But it was cheap so who cares? We only need to use it for a few days. Then we can, like, throw it in a wood chipper or start a fire with it or something. Preferably before it summons some sort of demon into our home."

Ivan fantasizes about chucking the thing into a wood chipper, considers the satisfaction of seeing flames melt away the vile features of it. Would it be worth it in the end? Having to wake up to it every day, carry it around, care for it and treat it as his own, would it be worth it?

No.

"I refuse. Not for one day, not for a few days. Absolutely not, Alfred. No."

"Oh, my God! Is this how you're going to react when we get an actual _human child!_ " Taking on a slouchy gait, Alfred stomps around the kitchen and adopts a painfully exaggerated accent. "'No. Do not want. It is not cute. Please return to mother's womb.' Well, guess what, asshole. Newsflash! Babies are ugly sometimes!"

Ivan is far from amused. "I do not talk like that. Nor do I walk like that."

"That's not the point!"

* * *

In the end, they come to a compromise, though Ivan is the true winner between the two. They will return Bernadette to whatever hellish department store she came from _immediately_ but Ivan is to treat the doll accordingly during the ride there. That includes: carrying it out to the car, strapping it into the car seat, and, of course, not openly referring to it as _it._

"This is stupid," Ivan complains as he ambles down the driveway toward the car.

Alfred is currently holding Bernadette cradled in his arms, making sure to properly support her neck. He is dedicated to this, apparently.

"The only thing stupid here is you."

"Very mature, Alfred."

"Whatever. Hold the baby. It's time to hold up your end of the bargain," he replies, thrusting the thing outward.

Ivan, unable to control his disgust, leans away, tucking his hands behind his back. _It_ stares up at him, peering deep into the darkest recesses of his vulnerable soul. The summer heat is sweltering, the sun is relentless, its rays beating down on them, yet Ivan shivers with chills.

"Take the baby, Ivan," commands Alfred, fighting a swiftly dwindling temper.

So Ivan does. He grabs it by the head, four fingers across the forehead, a thumb at the back and lifts it to eye-level. _Like clutching a basketball,_ he imagines, disregarding the stupefaction that unhinges Alfred's jaw and sends it plummeting toward the asphalt beneath their feet. While Alfred appears to be horrified, Bernadette does not seem to mind.

"That is _not_ how you hold a baby, Ivan. What the hell?"

"Yes, well, this is not a baby, Alfred," comments Ivan, rather nonchalantly. "Be happy I am even going to bother with putting it in the car seat."

His husband becomes an aggravated blur of blonde hair and wildly gesticulating arms, circling to the passenger side of the car.

"If you don't want to have a baby with me, that's fine! Just let me know so we can get a divorce!" Alfred calls over his shoulder before slipping into the vehicle and slamming the door hard enough to make Ivan cringe.

They are having an extremely off day. Ivan cannot help but blame the doll for their argumentative nature this afternoon. A spousal curse, no doubt. "This is all your fault," he accuses, setting Bernadette atop the car roof. For a second, really. By experience, Ivan knows he'll need both of his hands to untangle the belts of the car seat. And with Alfred in a foul mood, there is no other place to put it.

Music pours out onto the street the moment the back door swings open. Alfred sings along cheerily, bobbing his head to the beat of some obscure pop song, drumming his fingers on the dashboard.

Ivan, happy to see Alfred is no longer fuming, sticks his head in and _politely_ asks, "Dear, how do you—"

Alfred turns the volume dial of the radio to max, smoothly switching from singing to shouting. A childish tactic to silently inform Ivan that he is ignoring him. _So much for being in a better mood._

"Yes, thank you, sweetheart. I am learning so much from you. Great teamwork."

The middle finger Alfred directs to the backseat does not go unnoticed.

Ivan simply shuts the door, mumbling a few choice words in Russian. Today is a disaster. Responsibilities momentarily forgotten, he climbs into the driver's seat and jabs the key in the ignition, starts up the car and peels out of the driveway, heavy on the acceleration.

By the time he remembers the doll, it is far too late. For the sake of Alfred, he pretends not to see the baby rolling down the back window through the rearview mirror. Poor Bernadette tumbles down and shoots up off the trunk and into the street. If the damned thing can speak, Ivan is sure it is now screaming out a mechanical _Mama! Mama!_

"Where's Bernie?" Alfred inquires, twisting in his seat to see behind him.

 _Bernie_ , Ivan wants to ask, but he is hoping that no answer will stop the nosy questions in their tracks.

Alas, Alfred is a stubborn one and knows that something is amiss. The empty car seat is a dead giveaway.

"You didn't!" he cries, unbuckling his seatbelt, hand already on the door and ready to eject himself from the car. "Go back, go back!"

Ivan complies without complaint. The gig is up. They go speeding in reverse. A tad too quickly. _Much_ too quickly because it is only seconds before the car bumps, tires meeting an obstruction. _Pop!_ It goes, eliminated with minimal effort. _Ah!_ Alfred goes, shrieking in horror.

And it is clear Ivan has run over little baby Bernadette. _Oops._

Alfred is scrambling out of the vehicle before it even stops, yelling and screaming and carrying on like a banshee.

"You crushed her head! Sweet Jesus! Her eyes are gone! Her beautiful, _beautiful_ eyes."

Ivan stays glued to his seat. He rolls down the window but makes no other moves to participate in Alfred's dramatics. Good riddance.

"Bernadette! Why, God! Why did you take our baby? Why us!"

The neighbors are beginning to pour out of their houses, eager to experience a spectacle that is not playing out on a television screen. They peek indiscreetly through bent blinds and waving curtains. Phones are being pointed in their direction, capturing images and video to be posted online later. A mess. This is all a great big mess.

"Alfred! You are causing a scene. This is ridiculous. Get in the car or I am leaving."

"She was so young, Ivan! Our darling daughter! Why!" Alfred sobs, holding up the tire-marked remains for everyone to see. "Bernadeeeeeette! _Bernadette!_ "

Ivan pulls off, leaving his husband kneeling in the middle of the street with a flattened plastic baby. In his opinion, the new look is nothing short of an improvement.


End file.
